The ability to win close games has got the Lamigo Monkeys off to a fast start early in the season, as they have an 8-4 record over their first dozen contests, the best in the league.
The Primates are an incredible 5-1 in the six one-run games they have played, with some clutch hitting and stellar relief pitching to win a few games that they perhaps should not have won.
Getting the job done in crunch time for the Monkeys have been sluggers Lin Chih-sheng and Lin Hung-yu, who have accounted for game-winning RBIs in three of the five close wins that their team has tallied. The bashing tandem also are among the top five in the league, hitting .365 and .327 respectively.
Photo: Liao Yao-tung, Taipei Times
It was Lin Hung-yu’s clutch two-out triple in the top of the 11th that scored the game-winner in the Primates’ season opener, while Lin Chih-sheng was credited with a two-run single that capped an amazing six-run rally to erase a 0-5 deficit and top the Chinatrust Brother Elephants 6-5 in the ninth on March 28.
Doing the job on the mound for the Monkeys in the late innings are reliever Lin Guo-yu and closer Miguel Mejia, who have racked up two wins apiece out of the Lamigo bullpen with a pair of saves by Mejia.
Lin Guo-yu’s early success has been especially sweet for the Monkeys considering that the rookie right-hander out of Taipei’s Chinese Culture University was not even sure if he could make the first team as recently as December last year.
Despite their early success, Lamigo skipper Hung Yi-chung also recognized how easy his team could have been a middle-of-the-pack club if they had gone 3-3 in the one-run games. Hung sees the 8-4 mark as a lucky break as he looks to solidify a starting rotation that is 2-4, with struggling Shoda Itsuki and Hsu Ming-chieh still winless in five combined starts.
Should the starting duo continue to struggle for the Monkeys, Hung may be forced to shuffle his rotation a bit to keep his team on the winning track.
Inter’s defense of their Italian Serie A title was hit with a setback on Sunday as they lost 1-0 at home to AS Roma, while Scott McTominay netted a brace as SSC Napoli beat Torino 2-0 to go top of the table. No fixtures were played on Friday or Saturday because of the funeral of Pope Francis in Rome, meaning the full round of Serie A matches took place on Sunday and yesterday. Matias Soule’s first-half strike for Roma knocked Inter off top spot earlier in the day before new Napoli opened up a three-point buffer with victory in Sunday’s
Ethiopia’s Tigst Assefa yesterday set a women’s only world record of 2 hours, 15 minutes, 50 seconds as she won the London Marathon, while Kenya’s Sabastian Sawe put a star-studded men’s field to the sword. For 28-year-old Assefa it was ample compensation for finishing runner-up in London and the Paris Olympics last year — especially as bitter Dutch rival, the Ethiopia-born Sifan Hassan, finished third. Assefa dropped Kenya’s Joyciline Jepkosgei as the race, played out in blazing sunshine and with thousands lining the route, entered its business end. She came home almost three minutes clear of the Kenyan. Hassan, who beat her in
FOCUS: ‘We came out here with a goal in mind ... to keep our foot on their throat and on their neck, and continue to play 48 minutes of basketball,’ Donovan Mitchell said The Cleveland Cavaliers on Monday thrashed the Miami Heat to cruise into the next round of the NBA playoffs as the Golden State Warriors battled past the Houston Rockets 109-106 to move to the brink of a series victory. After pounding Miami 124-87 in game three on Saturday, No.1 Eastern Conference seeds Cleveland once again piled on the misery for their outclassed opponents with a crushing 138-83 victory to complete a 4-0 series win. The 55-point drubbing was the largest series-clinching victory in NBA playoff history and sets up a series against either the Indiana Pacers or Milwaukee Bucks in
Canadian actor Ryan Reynolds said it felt like an “impossible dream” when fellow Hollywood A-lister Rob McElhenney first floated the idea of buying soccer club Wrexham, along with a pitch for a documentary. The ultimate goal was reaching the Premier League. Four years after they purchased the north Wales outfit, Wrexham are one league away from achieving their lofty goal after a 3-0 win over Charlton Athletic on Saturday saw them promoted for a record third consecutive time. “We were standing there doing a press conference four years ago, and said our goal is to make it to the Premier League, and
RSS